Danny

Norman Lamb has the prized Dappy endorsement.

If only.

Just donated to Burnham's campaign, after hearing Yvette Cooper waffling on in Milibandese political speak on the radio and after Liz Kendall's Tory-esque pitch on Newsnight.

And now exceeding her previous low with this carcrash interview on Newsnight. "I believe in unleashing the potential of people" -- WHAT politician would EVER say the opposite??

Well, the average member of the public isn't going to be giving her much more than a minute's chance, and if the best she can come up with for that window is woolly and anodyne stuff about "giving people control" then it doesn't bode well. Again, this is the issue with Labour not being "left-wing" -- it means they have literally nothing of substance to say, unless they go the full Tory.

On the basis of this Woman's Hour interview, Liz Kendall is one of the worst for wonkspeak -- she seems to constantly be going on about all this Jon Cruddas bollocks about "devolving power" which nobody in the real world will be able to understand (including the presenter of the interview). http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02r772v That said, Andy Burnham's and Yvette Cooper's pitches are also pretty vacuous and seem completely unaware of the risk of Scottish-style disasters in England if Labour moves even further to the right.

Was that the interview with her spine-chilling "I'll be back" THREAT at the end?

Do you disagree then with all the crap Mandelson and Umunna et al are spouting then? (I'll admit Liz Kendall despite her "Blairite" moniker has not said anything I much disagree with....yet). To be honest, I think the main difference between the North and the South is that southerners are just more likely to believe scare stories about Labour (and scare stories are ALWAYS going to be whipped up no matter how much Labour moves to the "centre"--they were there even in 1997). In the north, because people are more likely to have parents who always voted Labour or know the local Labour MP or councillors, they know that Labour aren't the scary monsters of caricature so are more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt when scare stories come, whereas it's not the same in the south because there's not the same Labour history. Tbh, I think the only way of getting around is to have a leader who has the right personality and charisma to drown out the media nonsense and get through to people who are in areas where Labour don't have much success (and Ed Miliband was certainly not that person for all his supposed "improvements" in the campaign), but changing policies won't solve anything on it's own IMO.

But the thing is that most of the seats where Labour flopped this time are actually lower-class. Wirral West near me is filled with nice houses and people "aspirational" and doing well, and that had one of the biggest swings to Labour in the country, and they got almost as good a share of the vote there as Blair did! (Admittedly part of that was that a "scouse effect".)

Again, I have to ask, do you really think the reason people Labour flopped in some of the very run-down southern towns is because Labour weren't willing to cut services enough and were too nasty to millionaires? And that reversing stances on those things would change it?

Even people in an "aspirational" southern seat are evenly split on whether Labour was too left-wing or not left-wing enough: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32654893

Maybe not her necessarily, but loads of Labour people have been saying both that Labour were supposedly too left-wing, and then in the same breath talked about how badly Labour did in the South (with the implication that the two are linked). I still can't understand the logic that people in somewhere like Hastings would've voted for Labour if they'd pledged more cuts and been nicer to big business-men.

But one of the problems is that people are conflating "middle-class" and "the South", when it's nowhere near as simple as that. Loads of the seats in the Midlands and the South where Labour underperformed are pretty poor.

Tbh, I've changed my mind completely and think Labour and the Lib Dems should have a pact at the next election (much as many Labour members won't like that). Labour have to face facts that they're probably not going to win a majority on their own, so they need the LDs to knock out as many Tories as possible in seats which are no hopes for Labour (though the reverse might not work so well, I'm not sure if all remaining Lib Dem voters in a lot of Con-Lab marginals would necessarily go Labour). Plus, it might help Labour neutralise the SNP line next time because they could say they'd go into coalition with the LDs instead.

Ironically, Labour would now have a better chance of getting a majority if Scotland went independent before the next election.

Is there an updated list of Labour's "targets" after the new election anywhere?

Just watched it now. Credit where it's due, she atleast seemed a bit human and gave some non-soundbitey answers (unlike Chuka). But I just don't agree with her reasons for why Labour lost. When you look at the type of places in the South that were lost - many of them extremely deprived - I just can't understand the logic that their view of "aspiration" would be for more cuts to their services and less taxes on millionaires.

You should atleast go for Chuka if you want the 'Blairite' option :P He would atleast keep London on board even while alienating everyone else, I'm not sure we can even be sure of that with Liz Kendall.

I love this growing idea from people like Liz Kendall that the reason people in a rundown place like Hastings didn't vote Labour is because they were too nasty to millionaires. I mean seriously.

Just seen that Labour have taken West Cheshire council :o I thought the Tories from the "deep south" of Cheshire would always overwhelm here, Labour couldn't even take it in mid-term.

Yeah, I think what's often forgotten is the type of voters Labour needs to win in the South are in many cases more working-class (we're largely talking about Kent and Essex after all), and in many ways would be more responsive to a no-nonsense down-to-earth normal human. The only worry is a cultural jingoistic campaign about "northerners coming down to rob the southerners" might be whipped up -- though on the other hand, the Tories actually have something to lose from the North if they do that, whereas they didn't in Scotland, so maybe they wouldn't risk it.

That depends what type of experience we're talking about, surely? Arguably the "experience" that really matters is the experience of actually campaigning and learning how to persuade people of an argument in a way they'd relate to, something Miliband had never been forced to do, for all his back-room wonk experience.

Really?!? I remember back in the last leadership contest reading a Pinknews piece, where he said he was for gay marriage (Ed Miliband by contrast gave a very weasel-wordy answer). I know he's a bit against immigration and the EU, but I don't think that would push away too many liberal voters, unless he went the "full Farage" and started talking about Muslim fifth columns.

Who do you think will/should be the next leader?

Tbh, I'm having doubts about Andy Burnham. I fear he might be a bit brittle under pressure, plus he has a tendency to lapse into that knee-jerk "the Tories are evil baby-eating bast*rds" mode which really puts people off, not least because it sounds to a lot of people like they're also saying Tory voters are evil which does not exactly encourage them to switch (for all Tony Blair's policies have been a disaster for Labour in the long run, one thing he got spot on was the way he criticised the Tories: a sorrowful "they're doing what they think is best, but they just don't have the life experience to understand how difficult it is for people at the bottom". Nicola Sturgeon's also pretty good at sounding so sober when she criticises the opponents). That said, for all Burnham's flaws, the alternatives seem even worse. Yvette would do as well as Miliband at best imo, the rest even worse.